One of the lesser known British campaigns against German industry was Operation Outward which made use of cheap, simple gas balloons filled with hydrogen.
The balloons carried one of two types of payload.
A trailing steel wire, intended to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit,or three incendiary devices - six pound (2.7kg) flexible socks filled with flammable material - that were intended to start fires in forests and heathland.
From 1941 until 1944 a total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched: 53,343 carried incendiaries and 45,599 carried steel wires.

Communications intercepted by the British soon showed German fighters were trying to shoot down these balloons. This encouraged the British to continue with the campaign as it was felt that the harassment value on German air defences alone justified Operation Outward. It cost the Germans more, in terms of fuel and wear and tear on aircraft, to destroy each balloon than it cost the British to make them.
Outward's greatest success was on 12 July 1942, a wire carrying balloon struck a 110,000 volt power line near Leipzig. A failure in the overload switch at the Bohlen power station caused a fire that destroyed the station.

Operation Outward is considered to have been successful in terms of the disruption it caused to both the German defence system and in the damage it caused in relation to its total cost to the British

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!

The nuetron bomb was designed to have a minimal blast area, and a large, short term radiation zone. The idea was that items with large amounts of metal, such as tanks, would be irradiated and put the crews out of service. Then NATO troops would move in, clean up the contaminated metals, and the cities would not be affected as much. I think the big fear was that it reversed the normal order of targets. It was designed to attack people and allow buildings to survive. Mentally, the world could not handle that concept.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

What was that single shot pistol that was supposed to be disposable? The intent was to drop them to underground fighters. They were to then use them to kill Germans and take their better weapons. It was a dangerous fiasco. Was it called the liberty pistol or something like that?

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Best Regards,
JW

I remember more than one, but what I can recall, there was one made of stamped metal that was atrocious.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

That would be it.

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Best Regards,
JW

The Liberator.



Fantastic info Redcoat, I'd never heard of that before, going to have to look into it more, and possible use more commas in my next sentence, maybe...

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Bingo! That's the pistol, an unmitigated piece of crap. No wonder I couldn't find it when I searched for it- Liberator and not Liberty or Victory.

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Best Regards,
JW

I was beaten to it. I don't think I would call the Liberator a piece of crap, but an interesting weapon without a need. Over a million were built in 11 weeks at a cost of $.26 ea. The army built them as a pychological weapon and then gave them to the OSS. Came in a cardboard box with ten .45 ACP rounds and a wooden dowel to eject cartridges. Interestingly, it took less time to make the pistol than it did to load it. Since the barrel was unrifled, it had an effective range of 25 ft. and repeated use would keyhole the barrel. Average time of manufacture was 7 seconds and it took ten to load. The OSS never mass dropped it into europe for the anticipated uprising, but did ship many to China. No known case of it being used in combat. Complete setup worth about $4500 today.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Some other OSS weapons of note:

Sedgley .38 glove gun, single shot, fired by squeezing the body while the barrel stuck out between the middle two fingers.

A .22 single shot Stinger that was extremely compact.

The most popular was a modified HiStandard HDM .22 with a long silencer that was a great assignation weapon.

Interesting is that a followup to the Liberator was made by the CIA for use in Vietnam. Called the Deer Gun, it was aluminum, used a 9mmx19 round, and had a plastic clip that functioned as a safety until ready to use and then became the sight. The barrel unscrewed to load and once again, used a rod to eject the cartridge case. 1000 were made at a cost of $3.95 and again, they were never used.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

Thank you Sea Dog that made me recall that at the time the people in charge of Europe and the USA thought they could have a "limited nuclear conflict" with the Warsaw pact and not do alot of damage to Europe. The nuetron bomb was one of the wonder weapons in their wonder world.

I bet one of those Liberators is worth alot of money today. If they added a silencer to it then I would feel better using the thing but a .22 round is not likely to kill anyone right off the bat.

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Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

Other ideas that went into the garbage can:

Hajile

http://jwgibbs.cchem.berkeley.edu/CFGoodeve/hajile.html

Hajile was a "Deceleration Device" — in other words, the world's first retro-rocket.The Admiralty's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapon Development was actually working on a request from the Army, who wanted a better way than parachutes of getting heavy equipment like jeeps safely and quickly from an aircraft drop to the ground.

DMWD's answer was to put the equipment in a cradle fitted with a number of rockets that would fire a few metres above the ground, bringing the cargo to a soft landing, A plummet on a wire would trigger the firing. Unfortunately, things never quite went exactly to plan...


Panjandrum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panjandrum

The DMWD had been asked to come up with a device capable of penetrating the ten-foot high, seven-foot thick concrete defences that made up part of the Atlantic Wall.The proposed device was composed of two gigantic wooden wheels, ten feet in diameter with steel treads a foot wide, joined by a central drum fitted with the explosive payload. It was to be propelled by sets of cordite rockets attached to each wheel.

Given the results of the trial, it is perhaps not surprising that the project was scrapped almost immediately over safety concerns.

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Ahhhh, the Great Panjandrum is my favourite since I saw a film of it some 30-40 years ago, cartwheeling along the beach, and dying off in a gret belch of smoke and flame. Had to be seen to believe it, how anyone could think of that major piece of fireworks as a weapon is beyond sanity

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Bah!

.22 pistols are great for covert operations. Compact, and they are easy to silence. A well placed shot is very effective in killing. Larger rounds require larger weapons. Most covert experts prefer the .22 due to it being easy to conceal and it can be incorperated into numerous innoculous objects.

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Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am.

My Grandpa told me about the testing of the Panjandrum, said it was funny to watch.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

What about the welrod?

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As in the most successful silent pistol of it's time? Not sure it was a stupid weapon, it did the job.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Actually i was asking for information. Should have put it more clearly.

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Perhaps you Brits would care to comment on the 2in anti-aircraft rocket that was designed to foul propellers with a long wire. Hmm, I don't know, maybe this weapon belongs on the other thread with the most ingenious weapons of the war. You decide.

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Oops, sorry Joe, my mistake. Well, Wikipedia has a faily good article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welrod

Hopefully someone can add more.

As for the rockets, I'd vote ingenious (apart from the Bethnal Green fire thing) but I know very little about them. Seems like a smart idea and it did work.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...technology.htm

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Just one thing wrong about that article-it says it was used in Medal of honor games (whitch is true), but says nothing abou it's use in soldiers, heros of WW2!!
but thanks anyway.

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Well, in the absence of a large number of AA guns it was better than nothing, and in only known low level bombing raid on a Fighter Command airfield during the Battle of Britain it did pluck a German bomber out of the sky and damage another.
My view, not really a war winning weapon, but not a stupid idea.

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!